Life at university is mostly spent doing two things: indulging in Fun Times instead of worrying about deadlines and inventing ways to justify indulging in Fun Times instead of worrying about deadlines.
The most brilliantly imaginative of students are able to deceive themselves to such a degree that they perilously risk their obtainment of one. These cheerfully cursed souls are talented enough to be utterly convinced that, though they have three essays to write in three days, there is time enough for a few pints and a trip to the park. And a quick bite to eat. And a pint for the road. And a kebab. And a lie-in … and a few pints.
They are our heroes, the people who push our grades up, who descend into degree-less decrepitude and debt with a smile and a shrug, whose doctrine has been passed down from student to student since time immemorial: frolic perpetually; fail pathetically; feel proud; rinse, resit and repeat until the liver packs in. Bless them all. May they forever be free from the overpowering dread of The Deadline.
Most of us, however, are not afflicted with such remarkable gifts of self-delusion. The Deadline’s ever-growing shadow eventually looms large enough to pinion us to our desks. As the day draws closer and closer, every second away from the computer’s impassive glare becomes infected with guilt.
No action can be completed, no journey embarked upon, without searing pangs of remorse. Soon, as the days slip speedily away, the fear of facing the work and the fear of avoiding it amalgamate into a single gargantuan fiend of dread – complete with big red eyes and teeth that are most sharp to the touch. And probably a weapon of some kind. To facilitate the teeth as a method of attack. Maybe one of those wooden-pole things with rusty spikes on the end. But the spikes don’t have to be rusty; that is just a personal aesthetic preference.
At this point, usually around a week before the dreaded date, one is prone to do the classic Harry-Potter-when-facing-Dementors, buckling into inertia under the sheer weight of the terror.
Seeking a remedy, driven by a desperation more manic than the Manic Street Preachers doing a cover of Manic Monday while having a manicure, one usually attempts to find solace in the throes of daytime television’s brain-blotting fervour. It is a difficult, difficult time.
But The Deadline also possesses a glorious splendour. Its date is a herald of promise as well as a portent of doom.
Just as The Deadline looms forward, contaminating every day and week before it with an insatiable unease, so too does it bask every Monday to Sunday after its fall in the radiant light of infinite possibility. The weeks and months beyond its passing stretch out blissfully, endlessly, an ocean of potential adventure and boundless relaxation.
The pallid, accusing stare of a blank Microsoft Word document; the hours of stalling, scrolling through pictures on Facebook and cursing CJ from Eggheads; the hideous intricacies of referencing and the numbing pointlessness of every single thing you can think to write. The freedom beyond justifies it all.
For a few days yet, to me there are no words more beautiful than May and sixteenth.
